The Off Topic Topic

[The Brain]

Ricky Martin married a Swede? Why am I always the last to know these things?

[The Brain]

I truly wish I got some of these cards for the holidays! 

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-34988154

Nice.

[Malthus]

I truly wish I got some of these cards for the holidays! 

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-34988154

Nice.

Nothing says "Merry Christmas" quite like one frog murdering another.

[Jacob]

Nothing says "Merry Christmas" quite like one frog murdering another.

Spoken like an Englishman.

[Eddie Teach]

I have quit the Seedy Don't Quit thread.

[Malthus]

Nothing says "Merry Christmas" quite like one frog murdering another.

Spoken like an Englishman.

Well, it was an English Christmas card ... 

[Valmy]

I truly wish I got some of these cards for the holidays! 

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-34988154

[derspiess]

All that card artwork makes total sense if you compare them to some of today's internet memes. 

[mongers]

"Her majesty has to go around in a gold carriage of course, because of her terrible uber rating." 

[BuddhaRhubarb]

dead on languish tonight. is languish dying/ oh gosh i forgot how good it feels to write that. 

[11B4V]

dead on languish tonight. is languish dying/ oh gosh i forgot how good it feels to write that. 

Yeah it died a while back, welcome to necrophilia. 

As people get older they get lives.

[mongers]

Don't you just love modern day bullshit:

In a statement Pegasus Airlines said the plane "had a runway excursion incident" as it landed at Trabzon.

[The Brain]

OMG are the Byzanteens OK?

[Tonitrus]

Don't you just love modern day bullshit:

In a statement Pegasus Airlines said the plane "had a runway excursion incident" as it landed at Trabzon.

I've been studying too much Orwell lately. 

In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of the political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenceless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification. Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers. People are imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is called elimination of unreliable elements. Such phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them. Consider for instance some comfortable English professor defending Russian totalitarianism. He cannot say outright, 'I believe in killing off your opponents when you can get good results by doing so'. Probably, therefore, he will say something like this:

'While freely conceding that the Soviet regime exhibits certain features which the humanitarian may be inclined to deplore, we must, I think, agree that a certain curtailment of the right to political opposition is an unavoidable concomitant of transitional periods, and that the rigors which the Russian people have been called upon to undergo have been amply justified in the sphere of concrete achievement.'

The inflated style itself is a kind of euphemism. A mass of Latin words falls upon the facts like soft snow, blurring the outline and covering up all the details. The great enemy of clear language is insincerity.

[mongers]

I've been studying too much Orwell lately. 

In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of the political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenceless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification. Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers. People are imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is called elimination of unreliable elements. Such phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them. Consider for instance some comfortable English professor defending Russian totalitarianism. He cannot say outright, 'I believe in killing off your opponents when you can get good results by doing so'. Probably, therefore, he will say something like this:

'While freely conceding that the Soviet regime exhibits certain features which the humanitarian may be inclined to deplore, we must, I think, agree that a certain curtailment of the right to political opposition is an unavoidable concomitant of transitional periods, and that the rigors which the Russian people have been called upon to undergo have been amply justified in the sphere of concrete achievement.'

The inflated style itself is a kind of euphemism. A mass of Latin words falls upon the facts like soft snow, blurring the outline and covering up all the details. The great enemy of clear language is insincerity.

Ton. thanks for that, I'd not seen those brilliant couple of sentences before.